by Bryan Gruley
Gallagher sent them all back. Eileen motioned to Dingus, who stood and leaned close to her while she whispered something. He immediately looked over at Shipman. Dingus kept his eyes on the lawyer as he sat back down.
The judge took his glasses off and directed himself to the court reporter. “For the record, Miss Reporter, I have just been handed a note from the attorney, Peter Shipman, who is representing Leo-excuse me-the estate of the late Leo Redpath. I have disclosed the note’s contents to counsel for the prosecution and the defense.”
Flapp whispered something in Soupy’s ear. Soupy put his head down on his clenched hands and shook his head an emphatic no. The gallery leaned closer still.
“So, Miss Martin,” Gallagher said. “What do we do now?”
“With all due respect, Your Honor, this note is merely hearsay at this point. Until we’ve had an opportunity to verify-”
“Yes, yes, Miss Martin, don’t worry, I’m not about to dismiss the charges, but let me ask you this: You have no body, is that correct?”
“That is correct, Your Honor, but the county is prepared to dredge Walleye Lake at the first opportunity.”
Gallagher turned to Dingus. “Is that right, Sheriff?”
Dingus half stood. “Yes, Your Honor.”
“Had we only pursued such a seemingly logical step ten years ago, yes, Sheriff? Maybe we’d all be out watching the winter storm today. Instead, we’re here. So.” He looked at Eileen Martin. “Do we have a weapon?”
“Yes, we do, Your Honor.”
One of the other lawyers at the prosecution bench handed Eileen a clear plastic bag containing what everyone could see was a pistol. She held it up for the judge. “The county has marked this Exhibit 1-A,” she said. “It is a Browning Challenger III. 22-caliber pistol, manufactured in 1984. Although it was most recently in the possession of Mr. Redpath-our ballistics analysis indicates that he used it to inflict a fatal wound on himself-the gun was registered to the defendant, Alden Campbell, in January of 1988, and we have reason to believe it was used on the night Mr. Blackburn was killed.”
Another murmur rose and again Gallagher rapped with his gavel’s butt end. He looked skeptical. “Miss Martin, why would Mr. Redpath have had Mr. Campbell’s gun ten years later?”
Eileen lowered the bag. “Your Honor, what we believe we will elicit at trial is that Redpath had it for safekeeping.”
I looked at Soupy. His eyes were fixed on the table.
“Do you have other evidence, Miss Martin?”
“Your Honor, we have a witness who has additional testimony that, albeit indirectly, bears on the night in question. We would have had him here today but”-she turned and looked directly at Soupy-“he was detained.”
“Detained?” Gallagher said. “Just who is this witness?”
“Theodore Boynton, Your Honor.”
Of course. Boynton had known something himself and embellished it with whatever he’d picked up from Joanie and used it to blackmail Soupy. After Soupy stranded him at the zoning board, he’d gone to the police.
Gallagher turned to Flapp. “So what do we do, Mr. Flapp?”
Flapp stood. “Your Honor, based on the contents of the note delivered by Mr. Shipman, I would offer a motion to dismiss-”
“I wouldn’t do that, Counselor. Despite the fact that the circumstantial evidence in this case could just as easily point the finger of guilt at Mr. Redpath, and that this note proffered by counselor Shipman could just as easily be a cover for Mr. Redpath’s culpability, I am nevertheless inclined, for now, to give the benefit of the doubt to the prosecution out of respect for their professional integrity as well as that of Sheriff Aho, who in my experience does not bring defendants willy-nilly before this court.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Flapp said. “In the alternate then, this note, as Your Honor suggests, does raise serious questions about my client’s guilt in this matter. So again, addressing the question of bond, I would ask merely that Mr. Campbell be granted time to deal with the pressing matters pertaining to his livelihood.”
I didn’t think bailing Soupy out for even a few hours was a good idea. If he really cared about his business, his affairs would already be in order and he would have been at the zoning board meeting. The way he’d been acting of late, I thought he’d be safer-less of a threat to himself-behind bars.
Gallagher hitched himself forward. The faintest hint of a smile played on his lips. “Tell you what, Mr. Flapp, I’m certain that everyone in the courtroom would love to hear what it is we’re talking about.” He produced the note Shipman had given him and held it out to Flapp. “Would you do me the favor of reading this aloud?”
“Objection,” Eileen Martin said.
“Overruled. Counselor?”
Flapp stepped forward and took the note from Gallagher. The judge motioned for him to turn and face the gallery. The judge then said, “Mr. Flapp will read into the record a one-page note, as yet unauthenticated, handwritten in pen on yellow legal paper, purportedly by the late Mr. Redpath. Is it dated, Mr. Flapp?”
“Yes, Your Honor. Sunday. Two days ago.”
“Proceed.”
Flapp cleared his throat and read:
To the good people of Starvation Lake,
Today, I trust my higher power to guide me to a realm of peace, light, and rapture. No longer will I allow shame and guilt to control my feelings, nor will I willfully prevent myself from grieving the losses in my life. I am fully human on this day, and every day going forward.
Jack Blackburn was my mentor and my friend. He taught me many things about life. Knowledge can be a gift, and it can be a burden. Everything Jack did was rooted in the desire to live life to its fullest possibilities. This on occasion led him to places of shame and hurtfulness. He was human. He meant harm to no one. His knowledge became a burden he could not bear. On that night in the woods, Jack and I entered into a suicide pact. Jack honored his end of our agreement. I was weak at the time, and did not, until now.
You should look for Jack’s body in Walleye Lake, if it hasn’t been swept into the river by now. I pray I’ll be forgiven for keeping this to myself for so long. I pray this will satisfy those who want the truth, and release any and all who might mistakenly be held responsible. I am now willing to surrender to the darkness with the knowledge that light awaits me.
Flapp handed the note back to the judge. The gallery sat silent, stunned. I had begun to transcribe Flapp’s reading in my notebook but had to stop when he came to the suicide pact. I listened in a daze, without believing, without knowing what to believe. Nothing added up. I tried to picture Coach putting the pistol to his temple. I imagined Leo depositing the snowmobile in Walleye Lake. What “knowledge” could have prompted such an end? Why had Leo let Blackburn end his life if he didn’t think he could end his own? And why now, ten years later, had Leo felt the need to “honor” his end of the pact? Why hadn’t he simply confessed to what happened and let it be? What was he afraid of? Jail? The town’s recriminations? How had he concluded that a journey to peace, light, and rapture led down the barrel of a gun? Even if what he said happened had truly happened, there had to be something more, something darker and more sinister that he had determined to take with him to his grave. I looked at Soupy. He had lowered his head to the table and was gently shaking it, no.
Gallagher broke the silence. “I will be giving this note to the county for handwriting analysis. We’ll deal with that at trial, which I’m setting for March seventeenth, nine-thirty a.m. Mr. Flapp, I’ll give your client twenty-four hours, bond one hundred thousand dollars. Naturally you’ll need to post ten percent. When the twenty-four hours is up, he goes back to the county jail. Mr. Campbell, do you understand?”
Soupy’s answer was barely audible. “Yes.”
The judge looked at Eileen Martin. “Objections, Counselor?”
“Your Honor-”
Gallagher stopped her. “Keep in mind, Miss Prosecutor, that you have no body. You might have the weapon, or you
might not. Many of the people in this courtroom, and in our town, are probably wondering why we’re dredging this up at all. Because it’s the law, of course, and the law is sacred. But the fact is, Miss Martin, I could shut this down right now, and the law would be served well enough.”
“No objection, Your Honor.”
Cigar ashes and snowflakes flecked Delbert’s steel-wool beard when I found him outside the courthouse. An unruly gray mane spilled from his black fedora. He wore his camouflage jacket open and hid his eyes behind Ray-Ban shades.
“You know,” he said, “we had a perfectly good picture of the sheriff on file. Did you even bother to look?”
A few feet away, gawkers crowded the courthouse steps to eavesdrop on Tawny Jane Reese interviewing Flapp. With one hand Delbert raised his camera to his shades and snapped off a clicking whir of pictures. Behind me I heard someone call out, “Hey, Gus,” and I turned to see Elvis, grinning and pointing toward Flapp. “The puck’s over here,” he said.
I turned back to Delbert.
“Well,” he was saying, “if you have a bottomless budget for film stock and developing chemicals, fine with me, I’ll just keep shooting these people over and over again. Maybe you could make a flip book.”
“I have to talk to you,” I said.
“Talk.”
“Over here.” I motioned him toward the street. Standing close, I smelled the cigar smoke clinging to his beard. “You knew Blackburn, right?”
“Yes, sir,” Delbert said. “Fine man. Fine businessman.”
“You did some business with him?”
“Now just hang on, sir, I had permission from the publisher himself, Mr. Nelson P. Selby, to do my freelance work with whomever I chose. It didn’t cost the Pilot more than-”
“I don’t care about that, Delbert. What was it you did for Blackburn? Take pictures? Develop film?”
“Both, actually. I shot stills at hockey practices, a few things out at his place when he was building. I made him some prints. Mostly I sent stuff away for him.”
“You took pictures when I was playing?”
“That’s right, you played, didn’t you. Yeah, I was out there a few times.”
“And what stuff did you send away?”
“All film. Eight-millimeter. Sent it for developing.”
“You didn’t develop it yourself?”
“Nope. Wasn’t my thing. I got it done by a guy downstate. Cheap and reliable. But”-he chuckled-“he was mixed up with some shady characters. Like the Mafia or something. I think he got whacked.”
“Whacked?”
“Killed. Someone killed him.”
“How do you know that?”
“I don’t know. I made a delivery down there once. Wasn’t pretty.”
“Uh-huh. What was on the film?”
He tilted his head forward so that his pinprick eyes appeared between the brim of his hat and the rims of his shades. “Why do you care?”
“Look, Delbert, I don’t care if you did it on the Pilot ’s dime, OK? Like I said, I played for Blackburn. He meant a lot to me. I noticed some film in boxes in the photo files and wondered if it had anything to do with the team.”
“Jack thought it’d be safer, better organized, filed at the paper.”
Safer? I thought. From what? “Of course,” I said. “Did you ever look at any of it, by chance? The film, I mean?”
Delbert snorted. “A bunch of runts playing hockey? I hate hockey. You can’t see the damn puck. No, I just sent it to my guy.”
“And you think your guy got whacked because of a film of kids playing hockey?”
“That’s not what I said.”
A sheriff’s cruiser slid up to the curb where we were standing, Darlene at the wheel.
“Can I go back to doing my job?” Delbert said.
“Get the sheriff,” I said.
Dingus was coming down the walk toward us. He didn’t look happy. Tawny Jane followed along asking questions Dingus ignored.
“Sheriff?” I said as he neared me. I thought he was going to brush past, but he stopped. For a second I thought he might grab me again. He kept his voice low.
“What made you think you could go see my Barbara?” he said. Before I could answer he got in the car and slammed the door as Darlene pulled away.
My mother’s Jeep wasn’t in the driveway when I approached her house ten minutes later. Good, I thought. The fresh snow, now nine inches deep, groaned beneath my tires as I parked on the road shoulder. While the truck idled, I unlocked the back door and hurried into Mom’s basement. Mildew hung on the dank air. I reached into the dark and pulled the string that lit the ceiling bulb.
The 8-millimeter Bell amp; Howell projector was sitting atop a stack of boxes in the storage room Dad had built next to the water heater. I wrapped the cord around my left hand and gathered up the projector, rushing to get out before my mother came home. Halfway up the stairs I realized I hadn’t turned off the basement bulb. Hurrying back down in my wet boots I lost my footing and fell smack on the same spot I’d banged when I slipped on Boynton’s fish. “Son of a bitch,” I grunted. I stood, grimacing and rubbing my butt, snapped the light off, and struggled back up. At the top I looked out the kitchen window to see my mother pulling into the driveway.
“Gussy,” she said as she stepped into the kitchen, stamping the snow off her boots. She stared at the projector bundled under my arm. “What’s that for?”
“Oh,” I said, “I found some of these old films of our hockey practices and I thought, you know, with all that’s going on, it might be interesting to watch them.”
In silence she hung her coat and scarf in a closet by the door. She knew I was lying. She shut the closet and went to the kitchen sink to wash her hands. “Can I fix you something to eat?” she said.
“No, thanks, I’ve got to get back. I didn’t see you at the hearing.”
“I didn’t go.”
“I thought I’d see you.”
“Well, maybe I’ve had enough of the past for one week.”
She was upset. She closed her eyes and leaned against the counter, letting her hands hang over the sink, dripping. I set the projector down, stepped behind her, and put my hands on her shoulders.
“Are you OK?”
She shook her head. “It just seems like the whole town is falling apart.”
“Come on.”
“Leo. All these questions about Jack. Everything was fine before that snowmobile. Now wherever I go, everybody’s talking about what really happened to Jack, what really happened to Leo, and I know they’re all thinking I have the answers, just because I happened to be here that night, trying to get some sleep. But I don’t have any answers. I don’t have any answers, Gus.”
She pulled away and went to the fridge and removed a carton of orange juice. As she took a glass from the dish drainer and poured, I saw that her hands were trembling. I grasped her shoulders and gently turned her to face me.
“Mom.”
“Dingus called,” she said. She took a sip of the juice, then set it on the counter. “The police want to see me. And that TV woman called.”
“You didn’t talk to her, did you?”
“I’m afraid I wasn’t polite.”
“What can you tell Dingus that you didn’t tell him ten years ago?”
Her eyes flitted over the projector on the floor. “I worry,” she said.
“About what?”
She folded her arms. “Do you remember the time you called me a bitch?”
Of course. We’d been fighting for the hundredth time about whether I could spend the night in Coach’s billets with the other River Rats. Unlike other kids my age, I didn’t fight much with my mother, maybe because since Dad died we were all each other had. But this time I might as well have slapped her across the face. We didn’t speak to each other for two days. When I finally apologized, all she said was, “You’re too young to understand,” and it made me so mad that I almost called her a bitch again.
“Yes,” I said.
“I wasn’t just being a bitch.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“No. You don’t know.”
“What? Why do you keep talking in riddles?”
She took my hands off of her shoulders. “Those little houses,” she said.
“What? It’s not like we had to go there to drink and smoke dope.”
“Never mind,” she said. “Why do you care if I talk to that TV woman?”
“I don’t.”
“Please.” She turned back to the sink and started wiping the counter, which needed no wiping. “Don’t you need to get to work?”
“Mom,” I said. “Tell me.”
“That night,” she said. “Leo…” She dabbed at an eye with the towel. “Leo told me…he said he did a terrible thing.”
“What terrible thing?”
“I wouldn’t let him,” she said. “He kept trying to tell me. I wouldn’t let him. Then the police came, and we never talked about it again.”
“Do you mean he killed Coach? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying.” She put the towel down. “Go to work.”
“Mom.”
“Be careful with your father’s projector.”
She pushed past me and disappeared into her bedroom.
When I walked into the Pilot newsroom, Joanie was on the phone, frantically scribbling notes. I went up front and found Tillie hunched at her computer, smoking and typing. “You have a message,” she said, gesturing toward a pink While You Were Out sheet on the counter. Someone had scribbled on it, “Mr. Carpenter, I’m a reporter with the Detroit Times. Any chance I could borrow your newsroom to file a story this afternoon? Many thanks, R. Kullenberg.”
“Someone from Chicago called too,” Tillie said. “Didn’t leave a message.”
“They’re descending,” I said. The out-of-town reporters would come and interview the regulars at Audrey’s and Enright’s and then write their overwrought stories about the little town with the big trial. And in a day or two they’d all be gone again, and I’d be stuck putting out the Pilot. I tossed the message in the garbage. “Did all the stringers’ stuff come in?”